The Halloween prank most successful in history? Undoubtedly what happened on October 30, 1938, when CBS, the United States radio broadcaster, broadcast a program based on a novel by HG Wells, The War of the Worldswhich he told the invasion of Earth by Martians. The broadcast was hosted by the Mercury Theater company, of which he was a member Orson Wellestheater and film director, who in a few years would have directed one of the greatest masterpieces in the history of cinema, Fourth Estate.
Many listeners, knowing the usually serious tone of the broadcaster, they mistook the news for truththinking that extraterrestrials had really arrived in the United States. Some newspapers spoke of a real wave of panic. Today, however, we know that the psychosis was much less extensive than what was said at the time.
The War of the Worlds on the radio and Orson Welles’ fake news: what happened
On October 30, 1938, a radio broadcast based on a famous science fiction novel (released in 1897) aired in the United States. The War of the Worlds by Herbert George Wells, which told of the invasion of the Earth by the inhabitants of Mars. The novel, considered one of the masterpieces of science fiction literaturehad great success and was the subject of several film reductions.
On October 30, 1938, CBS (Columbia Broadcasting Systemone of the major radio stations in the United States) dedicated an episode of the program to the novel Mercury Theater on the Airhosted by members of the Mercury Theater company, who offered readings and reductions of famous novels. One of the creators was Orson Welleswho would become one of the world’s best-known film directors.
During the program some announcements taken from were broadcast The War of the Worldscommunicating that they were underway in the United States the invasion of extraterrestrial creatures. Here is an example:
Ladies and gentlemen, I have to announce something very serious to you. It seems incredible, but scientific observations and the evidence of facts lead us to believe that the strange beings who arrived on the New Jersey farm tonight constitute the vanguard of an armed invasion coming from Mars. The battle that took place tonight at Grovers Mill ended in one of the most disastrous defeats suffered by an army in modern times
The Martians had therefore arrived and, thanks to their superior technology, had easily defeated the “terrestrial” armed forces.
The alleged wave of panic over the prank on extraterrestrials on Halloween
The invasion was narrated in very realistic shapesimulating the announcer’s amazement, the crowd’s screams of terror, etc. For this reason, many listeners, despite having been informed before and during the program that the program was based on a novel, they mistook the news for truth. And, according to some sources, panic broke out in the United States. The newspapers told of people who barricaded themselves in their homes or they fled to inaccessible places, where the aliens would never have reached them. Orson Welles himself said that a wave of panic broke out after the broadcast.
Today we know, however, that such tales were exaggerated.
It is true that some listeners mistook the news for truth and were frightened, but there was no reaction of collective hysteria. The listeners of the CBS program were few, about 2% of the US population, and most of them understood perfectly well that the program did not tell real events. There wasn’t no “great fear” from alien invasion and no wave of panic. The fake news, therefore, was not the arrival of the Martians (which no one presented as a real event), but the spread of collective hysteria. The program taken from The War of the Worldsafter all, it was replicated by radio stations in other countrieswithout triggering waves of panic.
Fake news and collective psychosis: some examples
Throughout history, it has happened many times that the population of entire cities or even entire states mistook fake news for real, imagining that the community was in serious danger and consequently triggering real waves of panic. To give an example, think about fear of witchcraft and the resulting witch hunt, which bloodied Europe and the territories of European colonization in the centuries of the modern age: tens of thousands of people were put to death on the basis of belief, completely far-fetchedwho performed magical rites in agreement with the devil.
Or, think about «great fear» of 1789: in France, a few days after the start of the Revolution, the rumor spread according to which the aristocrats had organized a counter-revolutionary movement and that hordes of armed men were roaming the countryside to exterminate the rural population. The news had no basis, but it devastated the French countryside for at least two weeksfrom 20 July to 6 August, and had profound consequences, contributing to the abolition of feudalism.
The spread of collective psychoses and irrational phobias is not rare, in different forms, even in today’s world. Just think of fake news like the one on radioactive tunathat is, the news that cans of tuna caught in Fukushima after the 2011 nuclear disaster and therefore contaminated are on sale on the market. In 1938, the psychosis concerned a supposed alien invasion.
